1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a printing system for carrying out print jobs in accordance with a job specification associated with a print job.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system of this kind is described in an international patent application by Kodak, International Publication No. WO 89/06024. This describes an electronic printing system which stores a number of print jobs in a mass memory. The printing system is provided with means for selecting stored print jobs on the basis of a set of print criteria. This set consists of criteria all related to the need for an operator to intervene.
The system described has an unmanned automatic mode of operation in which, on the basis of the print criteria, only those print jobs for which no operator intervention is required are selected for printing. Print jobs for which operator intervention is required are saved and continue to remain in the mass memory until an operator is present who switches the system to a manual mode and then can arrange for all or only selected jobs out of the saved print jobs to be printed.
The advantage of such a system is that print jobs requiring the intervention of an operator are filtered for printing at a later time. In this way it is possible for the printing system to process independently all the print jobs not requiring an operator's intervention. Generally, there is a need to enable a printing system to operate automatically to the greatest extent and for as long as possible and accordingly in a manner to be configured by the user.
However, the above-mentioned printing system only partly provides this.
First, in the system described, the print criteria are restricted to those criteria whereby print jobs requiring the intervention of an operator are filtered out. There is a need to be able to test for several criteria.
In addition, the above-mentioned criteria as such cannot be set or removed by the user. Consequently, it is not possible for the automatic mode to be accurately adapted to environmental requirements.